The agency received two complaints about the marketing from the Seychelles-headquartered firm Organic Burst World, which claims to sell “perfect superfoods to help you look and feel amazing fast" and a “detox” chlorella to “reboot and refresh”.
The ASA agreed with the plaintiff that the adverts were not in line with the EU’s Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (NHCR) in that they referenced general, non-specific health benefits without backing up with specific authorised health claim for ingredients.
The superfood claim was written on the website homepage, from which visitors could click to specific products.
Lost in lists
The company argued that the homepage claim related to a range of products, rather than one specific product, and that product pages contained only authorised specific claims.
The company said it would be “confusing” to list all of the authorised health claims for all of the products immediately next to the phrase superfood.
However in its ruling, the ASA said: “The advertiser had not specified which authorised claims it was relying on, but having looked at some of the product pages on the website, we were concerned that the claims listed did not appear to be authorised health claims.”
Too general
For the chlorella claim, the company said it based its marketing on two 'on hold' health claims related to 'digestive health/liver health' and 'helps to maintain normal colonic function'.
However the ASA said that ‘detox’ was a reference to a “general, non-specific health benefit of a product and as such, it was also required to be accompanied with a relevant authorised health claim”.
It told the company to change its advertising and ensure general health claims were accompanied by a specific authorised health claim.